CityLife

Halle tunes in to festive cheer with Trelawny

Petroc Trelawny

’Tis the season to be carolling, and the Hallé know all about that.

They have five carol concerts to offer over between now and Wednesday night – two of them on Sunday.

They’re all hosted by BBC radio and TV classical music presenter Petroc Trelawny, who’s become a familiar face at the Bridgewater Hall in recent years, introducing live concerts.

In fact he started presenting them from behind a microphone in his brief time based in Manchester, which was in 1997 – five years after his dulcet Cornish tones were first heard on Classic FM.

Petroc’s a bit of a shrinking violet when it comes to his own musical accomplishments, but he confesses to having learned to play the piano, and even doing a bit of singing in talent contests, as a boy.

“I grew up in a military family,” he says. “My father had no interest in music and claimed to be ‘tone-deaf’ – but my mother was very musical and was a church organist. She had a big collection of records and always had Radio 3 on.”

And even in the village of St Martin in Cornwall there was live music going on around them. “There was the International Musicians Seminar at Prussia Cove each year, and we could hear the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and performances by Duchy Opera and other musical events at Truro Cathedral, with chamber music concerts here and there.”

His piano teacher was a personality. “She was a wonderful teacher, quite elderly but rather glamorous, with two Pekinese dogs and smelling faintly of mothballs,” he recalls. “She had had a performing career in India in her earlier life.

“I did my grades with her, but after that it was the old thing of not wanting to practise.”

His real love was radio – so much so that he had a slot on the local community station while he was still at school and missed his A-level mocks because he was on air at the time.

“Fortunately, the signal wasn’t strong enough to be picked up where I was at school, or I might have been in deep trouble.”

He managed to avoid university entry and got a job at the BBC in Exeter instead. And since then he attributes his career to ‘luck and being in the right place at the right time’.

Music continued to be a part of his life, but he didn’t expect it to be central to his career – until he happened to be working in Hong Kong when one of the founding bosses of Classic FM, a parachute jumping enthusiast, was there ‘collecting drop zones’, as they put it.

“He heard me and it turned out that they lost the person who was due to present the afternoon show, just three weeks before the launch, and my name came up.

“I realised that the future of English language broadcasting in Hong Kong might not be too bright and joined Classic FM.”

He is full of enthusiasm for the Hallé’s carol concerts.

“The orchestra take them very seriously. They’re well prepared, and there’s a real sense that they are an important part of the calendar.

“They’re genuine musical events as well – and there’ll be a few surprises in the programmes.

“And they represent the whole Hallé family – the Hallé Children’s Choir and Youth Choir as well as the main Hallé Choir.

“We have a lot of fun back-stage – the youth choir in particular always try to persuade me to try to humiliate the conductor by giving him a silly hat to wear, or something like that.”

So watch out, Timothy Redmond, conductor for all the carol concerts. You have been warned.